AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


































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& m c r i c n n Cite v a t n v c. 


AN 

ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


Jptjilomatljaeau anir pljrenakosmimt Societies 


OF 


PENNSYLVANIA 


COLLEGE. 


BY WM. M. REYNOLDS, 

Professor oi Latin language, in Pennsylvania College. 




GETTYSBURG : 


PRINTED BY H. C. NEINSTEDT. 


MDCCCXLV. 




1H EXCHANGE 

Bos. 4Nrw. 

Mr 3 ’06 









Pennsylvania College , September 18th. 1845. 


Rev. Prof. Reynolds, 

Sir,— It is our agreeable duty on behalf of the Philomathaean and Phrena- 
kosmian Societies of Pennsylvania College, to tender you their thanks for the very 
excellent and instructive address delivered before them last night, and respectfully 
to request a copy for publication. 

With sentiments of highest esteem, 

We are, Sir, 

Respectfully yours, 


AUGUSTUS C. WEDEKIND 
CHARLES A. BROUGHER, 
JOSEPH WELKER, 

WM. A. RENSHAW, 


A. ESSICK 


M. SCHAEFFER 


Joint Committee. 





Gettysburg , September 1 Sth : 1845. 

Gentlemen— 

The Address which was prepared at the request of the Societies represented 
by you, is at your disposal. With a grateful acknowledment of the kind feelings 
which prompted you in appointing me your annual orator and extending to me the 
courtesies of the occasion, 

I remain, young gentlemen, 

Yours most respectfully, 

W. M. REYNOLDS. 

Messrs. Agustus C. Wedekind, 

Charles A. Brougiier, 

Joseph Welker, 

Wm. A. Renshaw, 

A. Essick, 

M. Schaeffer, 


Joint Committee. 



American I'Ucialuve. 


Literature in all its forms is a true exponent of humanity. 
It not only exhibits man in his peculiar rank in the scale of crea¬ 
tion, as a rational being capable of expressing and perpetuating his 
thoughts, but it likewise unfolds the true character of the individ¬ 
ual, of the race and of the age. “As a man thinketh, so is he;” 
it is his thought that makes him a man, and he cannot but be the 
outward manifestion of his thought. He speaks because he thinks, 
and thus thought and speech are inseparably linked together, # so 
that words give permanence and immortality to what is otherwise 
the most unsubstantial and fleeting of all earthly products. Lan¬ 
guage is, therefore, as spontaneous as thought, and is, in fact, the 
grand instrument by which it is conducted as well as communi¬ 
cated. It is true we do think of objects before we have names for 
them, but such contemplations give us no satisfaction as rational 
beings. The blue expanse of heaven, the sun and the host of 
stars by which it is lighted up and adorned; the earth, its moun¬ 
tains and forests, its broad plains and silver streams arrest the at¬ 
tention and excite pleasurable emotions in the breast of the child 
or of the savage, but they cannot recall them, or reason about them 
until they have words with which to describe them and terms with 
which to compare them with other parts of their knowledge.— 
However vividly the images of these things may be recalled, they 
must have names, or man loses the power of discriminating be- 

* See the « Organism der Sprache von Dr. K. F. Becker,” 2d Ed., Frankfurt 
am Main, 1841. § 25 : “ Die Sprache ist der in die Erscheinung tretcnde Gedan- 
ke, und das Wort der irn Lauten leiblieh gewordene BegrifF,” &c. 


6 


tween the past and the present, the real and the ideal. But when 
names have once been given to things—when ideas have been 
catalogued and classified, man is able to make use of his know¬ 
ledge, to recall it, review it, examine it in all its parts and carry it 
forward towards perfection. And then, how potent words become! 
What a train of ideas the least of them may excite! What emo¬ 
tions, what passions they may enkindle, and to what actions may 
they not give birth! Home, country, liberty, right and duty, have 
been watchwords by which society has been organized and held 
together, and by which individuals and nations have been anima¬ 
ted and nerved for the performance of those exploits which trace 
upon the pages of history their most glorious characters. 

Yet “ spoken words perish”—they die away amid the vast sol¬ 
itudes of time, like the din of the battle, growing fainter and faint¬ 
er over the unbroken expanse of the ocean, until not a murmur of 
it is heard in the breeze that fans the face of the far distant conti¬ 
nent. To him who has it, and to those who hear it, it may be the 
voice of life or of death, but there is a vast multitude beyond its 
range where not the least echo of it is heard or understood. But 
man lives not merely for the present, or for his own age or nation. 
He has within him the germ of immortality, and this he would 
see engrafted upon his words, that they may continue far beyond 
the ever-vanishing present. And this he effects by his literature, 
which, though mute, is the combination of all sounds that can 
charm the human ear or touch the human heart. 

All nations, therefore, when not checked in their developement, 
naturally have a literature, and that a literature of their own. If 
they have not they are not men, for even the child is not merely a 
parrot to repeat the words which it hears from others, but intonates 
and arranges them according to its own nature, and adapts them to 
its own purposes. One age or nation may imitate and copy very 
closely the literature of another, but still it will transfuse into it its 
own life and nature. This was remarkably the case with Latin 


\ 




7 


Literature, the language of which, commencing as little more than 
a dialect of the Greek, was from age to age cultivated and enriched 
by its study, whilst its writers scarcely seemed to think of a theme 
that had not first been elaborated for them by their Grecian mas¬ 
ter. And yet what grace and beauty, what vigor and dignity is 
there not in Latin literature! Not only did the language emanci¬ 
pate itself and become independent, but, true to the genius of the 
people who spoke it, it wrested the sceptre of universal dominion 
from its former mistress, and became almost the language of the 
world of civilized man. However much has been said about its 
want of originality (and to this, too, it may lay sufficient claim,) 
no one has ever yet denied that there is such a thing as Latin lit¬ 
erature. 

And equally absurd is it to question, as so many have been 
fond of doing, whether there is such a thing as American literature. 
The Anglo-saxo-norman race, (if we must have a word that ap¬ 
proximates the genealogical fact,) the great mass of the people of 
these United States, have asserted and maintained their nationality 
in the most decided manner. The intellectual and moral bonds 
which held them as a portion of the subjects of the British crown, 
had been broken long before the Declaration of Independence was 
written, and nothing short of the absolute extermination or silenc¬ 
ing of those who united in that Declaration, could have established 
British sentiments or a British literature among the descendants 
and disciples of the Puritans. The despotism of the monster Hen¬ 
ry YIII., the fires of Smithfield, the mingled vindictiveness of wo¬ 
man and priest in Elizabeth’s iron reign, could not terrify, or check, 
or exterminate the spirit of Christian liberty kindled by Wick- 
lifle, rendered triumphant by Luther, and still farther exalted and 
emboldened by Calvin and Knox. It enthroned itself among the 
mountains of Scotland, it crossed the wild and wintry Atlantic, and 
placing one foot upon the Rock of Plymouth and the other upon 
the shore of the Pacific, it claimed the whole intervening conti- 


0 


8 


nent as the theatre of its exploits and its inalienable inheritance. 
Betrayed by its mercenary auxiliaries, and shorn of its strength by 
Cromwell who had led it to victory over the bodies of the aristo¬ 
cracy, through the blood of the king and across the scattered frag¬ 
ments of the pretended church of England, the republican party 
of Great Britain sang its death-song in the immortal strains of Mil- 
ton,*' and then sank upon its funeral pyre, only to arise, like the 
fabled phoenix of the East, with renewed youth and vigor to cleave 
a purer air and to soar nearer to the sun in the western world. 

A strongly marked national character would naturally have 
been impressed upon the people of this country by the circum¬ 
stances under which they emigrated to it.f But when these were 
combined and flowed in the same channel with their previously 
formed opinions, they gave a still more decided form to the reli¬ 
gious, social and political institutions which suddenly started into 
being upon the rich and virgin soil of the western world. Origin¬ 
ality and independence of thought, boldness in its enunciation and 
steadfastness in its maintenance, but more especially a determina¬ 
tion and an effort to realize their ideas might naturally be expected 
to characterize the men who had risen superior to the superstitions 

* Milton, as is well known, lost his sight in writing his “Defence of the peo¬ 
ple of England,” though his physicians had previously warned him that sucli 
would be the result. Three years after he expresses himself thus, in his sonnet 
to Cyriac Skinner: 

“ Vet I argue not 

Against heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer 
Eight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 

The conscience, friend, to have had them overplied 
In Liberty’s defense , my noble task.” 

f Emigration to New England was commenced just before the struggle be¬ 
tween Charles I. and the British Parliament commenced. That it was composed 
mainly of what afterwards became the Republican party is proved by the fact that 
during the contest and until the restoration of the monarchy, emigration to New 
England was almost entirely checked. But at this very time the southern colony, 
or Virginia, received a large accession of cavaliers and other partizans of the king 
who fled from the country in great numbers after his final defeat and surrender.— 
The Restoration again gave a new impulse to the colonization of the northern 
colony. 



9 


of their age and of their ancestors, drawn the sword against those 
to whom they had once bowed as their feudal lords and heaven- 
anointed kings, and then sailed over a thousand leagues of ocean 
in order to plant in the boundless wilderness a church and a state 
correspondent to that ideal which they saw depicted in the word 
of God. Even the colonists who came to Virginia (as the whole 
country now designated as the U. States of North America was 
called by its first settler, Sir Walter Raleigh,) without any fixed 
principles, or with very different ones from those cherished by the 
Puritans and republicans, were very remarkably prepared for co¬ 
operating with them in the realization of their schemes and form¬ 
ing of a government or a nation in which the individal should have 
the largest possible liberty.* So widely separated from the coun¬ 
try which claimed their allegiance, so little thought of by it during 
the absorbing events of the Revolution and of the Restoration, re¬ 
garded as so insignificant in their brief infancy, it is not strange 
that they who had chosen so adventurous a mode of repairing their 
broken fortunes or bettering their social condition, should be some¬ 
what inclined to independence and boldness and self-government 
in politics. In fact this was an almost inevitable result of their 
position. Thus even the Southern colony, or Province of Vir¬ 
ginia, undertook the management of its own affairs almost as soon 
as it had the form of a civil society. So late as sixty-four years 
after its settlement, its Governor, Sir William Berkely, boasted of 
its docility and adaptedness to an absolute government after this 

* I agree with Cousin in regarding this as the proper object and design of gov¬ 
ernment. “Justice,” says he in his “Introduction a 1* Histoire de la Philosophic,” 
p. 12., “justice is the maintenance of reciprocal liberty. The state (government) 
does not at all, as is commonly said, limit liberty ; it developes and guaranties it. 
Much rather, in primitive society, all men are necessarily unequal in their pursuits* 
in their sentiments, in their physical, intellectual and moral powers; but in the eye 
of the state which only considers men as persons, as possessed of liberty, all men 
are equal, liberty being equal in itself and the only type and sole measure of equal¬ 
ity, which without it is nothing but a resemblance, that is, a diversity. Equality, 
the fundamental attribute of liberty, makes, then, together with that liberty, the 
basis of legal order and of the political world,” etc. 

B 


I 


10 


< •; 

fashion : “ I thank God that there are no free-schools, nor printing 
presses here; and I hope that we shall not have them these hun¬ 
dred years; for learning hath brought disobedience and heresy and 
sects into the world ; and printing hath divulged them in libels 
against the best governments. God keep us from both.” But at 
this very time Virginia had already established a representative 
form of government, and whilst they were devoted partizans of the 
monarchy, it was the people themselves who invested Berkely 
with the powers of a royal governor, even before the Restoration 
of Charles II. So in Maryland, the force of circumstances 
made Lord Baltimore, a member of the British aristocracy, the 
founder of a republican and representative system of government; 
made him, whose conscience was perhaps in the keeping of a Je¬ 
suit confessor, # the advocate of toleration and freedom in religion. 
It was not, we may be sure, his own principles that made this no¬ 
bleman, still glowing with the zeal of recent conversion f to a 
new faith, an advocate and founder of civil and religious liberty. 
The Christian will adore in this event the wisdom of that God who 
a maketh even the wrath of man to praise him, and restrains the 
remainder thereof,” whilst the historian and the statesman will ob¬ 
serve with wonder the influences by which the strict Puritan of 
New England and the cavalier-like adventurer of Virginia, the 
plain Quaker of Pennsylvania, and the Romanist of Maryland, 
devoted to all the pomp and ceremony of his sect, together with 
the Lutheran from Germany J and the Calvinist from France, were 

* See President McCaffrey’s “Oration on the landing of the Pilgrims of Mary¬ 
land,” H. C. Neinstedt, Gettysburg, 1842. “They were accompanied,” says he, 
“by four members of the Society of Jesus ;” (Jesuits.) They seem to have re¬ 
ported to their superior in Rome, as we find our author quoting “a letter preserved 
in the Jesuit College at Rome.” 

f Sir George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore, became a Papist in the reign of 
James I. 

X Prof. Schaf, of Mercersburg, in his “Princip des Protestantismus,” pp. 138- 
145, deprecates “ein charakterloses Aufgehen unserer Gemeinden in Englische De- 
nominationen,” (a characterless transition of the German churches into English,) 
but hopes that the time has now come, “wo das Amerikanische Deutschland aus 


I 


11 


not only united under one government, but animated by certain 
common sentiments, and imbued with all the peculiarities of a 
common nationality. This first became fully apparent in our rev¬ 
olutionary era, when the whole country from Maine to Georgia 
was every where animated by the same spirit, and all united, not 
only in a common effort to emancipate themselves from the do¬ 
minion of Great Britain, but likewise in organizing a common gov¬ 
ernment for themselves and their posterity, as a nation “ one and 
indivisible.” Here most remarkably do we perceive the spread of 
republicanism and its correspondent religious sentiments, or rather 
bf the democracy of the Bible, whence we believe the sentiments 
of the Puritans in regard to civil government were most naturally 
and legitimately deduced. Although the church of England was 
by law established in Virginia and Maryland, (whence Romanism 
had been swept by the victorious Independents during the protec¬ 
torate of Cromwell, Episcopacy being established at the restoration 
of the monarchy in England,) yet here, and throughout the South 
generally, the desire for Independence and liberty manifested itself 
with that more vivid enthusiasm which usually characterizes our 
southern temperament. The churchman was absorbed in the free¬ 
man, and the Episcopal clergymen, generally natives of England, 
and educated in that country under a system hostile as well to civil 
as to religious liberty, not sympathizing with this popular move¬ 
ment, or even violently opposing it, were driven from their pulpits 
and from the country by the indignation and threats of their par¬ 
ishioners. There were some noble exceptions to this, but they 
were few and peculiar. On the contrary, the Puritan pastors of 
New England with scarcely an exception, the Presbyterians of the 

den Triimmern seiner eigenen Nationalist und Sprache—wieder aufgehen und 
ein neues, eigenthiimliches, fur unser ganzes Land erfolgreiches Entwickelungs- 
stadium eingehen wird,” (when American Germany shall arise from the ruins of 
its own nationality and language, and enter upon a new and peculiar course of de- 
velopement, that shall have the most decided influence upon our whole country.) 
This is strong testimony as to the absorption of the German by the American na¬ 
tionality, but the fulfilment of the prophecy is not so certain. 


I 


ft 


12 


Middle states, and even the Germans who had just been natural¬ 
ized, # were the active and among the most influential friends and 
furthered of the Revolution. Their churches, for a time, ceased 
to resound with denunciations of formality and heterodoxy, and 
re-echoed to bursts of patriotic eloquence, and frequently glittered 
with the arms of the citizen soldier coming into the house of God 
to receive the prayers of ministers and members, before he started 
on his march to join the revolutionary army. After the expulsion 
of the Steuarts, the Romanists of Great Britain had no sympathy 
with the monarchy, and still less would any thing of this kind be 
felt by those who had emigrated to America. It is not strange, 
therefore, that Charles Carroll of Carrollton, should have been 
one of the most prompt to put his name to the Declaration of In¬ 
dependence. His faith had nothing to fear and every thing to 
hope from the separation of the colonies from the mother country. 

I have gone into these details not so much to prove that the 
people of this country had, by the time of the Revolution, devel¬ 
oped a very decided national character (which no one will attempt 
to deny,) as to unfold the influences by which that character was 
formed, by which our inquiries into the genius of the nation will 
be greatly assisted. That the democratic spirit, the desire of inde- 

* Under the date of August 25, 1775, Dr. Helmuth, one of the Lutheran 
pastors in Philadelphia, writes to the Directors of the Orphan-house in Halle, by 
whom he had been sent as a missionary to the Germans in Pennsylvania: “Great 
preparations are made everywhere throughout this country, and nearly all are un¬ 
der arms. The zeal displayed in these disturbed times is indescribable. When a 
hundred men are called for, a much greater number present themselves, who are 
very much dissatisfied that they are not called into service, as all are not required. 
My limited acquaintance with history furnishes me with no parallel to the state of 
things which exists here. Districts in regard to which we must have supposed that 
years would elapse before their people would voluntarily take up arms, have be¬ 
come quite military within a few weeks after the arrival of the news of the first 
battle at Lexington in New England. Quakers, Mennonites and others unite in the 
military trainings and thus, in great numbers, renounce their former religious prin¬ 
ciples.” See the “Hallische Nachrichten,” part 15, pp. 1356-7. General Peter 
Muhlenberg was also a son of Dr. H. M. Muhlenberg, the first pastor of the 
German Lutheran church in Philadelphia—we believe the father was as staunch a 
Whig as the son. 


13 


pendence and of self-government was thus naturally developed 
and strengthened, no one can fail to perceive. But that the Puri¬ 
tan, or New England, element was the most powerful, the most en¬ 
ergetic and preponderating, resulted from the nature of the case.— 
Not only did the New England colonies increase more rapidly 
than any others, and thus acquire a numerical superiority, but 
other causes increased this. The theory and practice of the great 
mass of the New-Englanders both tended to the same conclusion. 
They were republicans, and desired to have the full control of 
their own affairs, not only because it was inconvenient to wait upon 
the whims of a monarch, or the deliberations of a Parliament three 
thousand miles distant from them, but much more because they 
did not believe that those claiming the right of jurisdiction over 
them had any just title to it. Their ideas being thus clearer and 
their sentiments more deeply rooted, would, of course, be an¬ 
nounced with more distinctness and force. They thus naturally 
gave tone and direction to the democratic movement, and the ge¬ 
nius of the nation was democratic. But as we have said before, 
the literature of a nation will be the exponent of the national char¬ 
acter, so that if we are acquainted with the use of letters we must 
likewise have a literature of our own, which we may for the pre¬ 
sent designate as American literature, of which we believe the 
spirit, or characteristic, to be democratic. And it is this that gives 
our literature, like every thing else among us, its utilitarian cast. 
Democratic institutions necessarily take the form of the useful, 
their object being the promotion of the interests of the whole, and 
not merely of a part of, the community. 

The first English colonists of America were by no means illit¬ 
erate. Even in the Southern colony of Virginia they were directed 
in their enterprise by such men as Sir Walter Raleigh, whose “His¬ 
tory of the Wold,” written during ten years of confinement in the 
tower of London, shows a spirit which, like that of the state whose 
foundations he laid, could never be broken. The chivalrous Cap- 


14 


tain Smith, to whose prudence and corage the colony at James¬ 
town was so often indebted for its preservation, was also a writer 
and a man of science. His lively description of New England, as 
he named the Northern part of the Virginian colony, appears to 
have given colonization an impulse in that direction, whilst his ac¬ 
curate survey of the Chesapeake Bay and other parts of the coast 
greatly facilitated and directed the enterprize. It appears to have 
been to his skill in astronomy and geography* that he owed the 
restoration of his liberty after his life had been preserved by Ma- 
tokes or Matoaka (Pochahontasf) “Powhatan’s dearest daughter,” 
as Purchas calls her, who is deservedly regarded as Virginia’s tute¬ 
lary genius. Alexander Whitaker, the preacher at Henrico, was 
also of a literary turn, as is testified by his letters from Virginia and 
his book upon the same subject, which I have never seen, but find 
quoted by Purchas. The companions chosen by such men to aid 
them in their glorious enterprise, could not but be more or less im¬ 
bued with the same taste and habits. Of this we see evidence in 
the statement with which Purchas (a cotemporary) sums up his 
narrative of the restoration of order and prosperity, after the disas¬ 
ters and confusion of the first few years of the settlement at James¬ 
town. “Lawes are now made (says he) for the honour of God, 
frequenting the church, observation of the Sabbath, reverence to 
Ministers, obedience to Superiours, mutuall love, honest labours; 
and against Adulterie, Sacriledge, Wrong and other vices, harben- 

* “Now the savages enchanted by Smith’s relations of God nature and art 
were in a manner at his command,” Purchas , His Pilgrim, p. 940. Again on page 
944, he says that Smith, “escaping their furie, yea receiving much honor and ad¬ 
miration amongst them, by reason of his discourses to them upon the motion of 
the same, of the parts of the World, of the sea, &c. which was occasioned by a 
Diall then found about him.” 

f “They toolce Pokahuntis (Powhatan’s dearest daughter) prisoner,” says Pur¬ 
chas, p. 943, “a matter of good consequence to them of best to her, by this means 
being become a Christian and married to Master Rolph, an English gentleman.— 
Her true name was Matolces, which they concealed from the English, in a super¬ 
stitious fear of hurt by the English, if her name was knowne; she is now chris¬ 
tened Rcbccca >” < 




gers of God’s wrath and mans destruction.” Colleges and literary 
institutions were founded some time before the Revolution, though 
students and professional men generally, especially the priesthood 
among the Romanists and Episcopalians, continued to be educated 
in the institutions of Great Britain and France, as there alone or¬ 
dination accordant with their views could be obtained. This would, 
of course, tend to assimilate the views and feelings of those thus 
educated to those of their European masters, though in other re¬ 
spects, by elevating the standard of scholarship, it would supply 
the country with a considerable body of valuable men. Yet the 
distance and the expense of a voyage across the Atlantic would 
deter numbers who might otherwise have attained a liberal educa¬ 
tion from doing so. 

But in New England the state of matters was very different. 
The Puritan colonists so far from being (as their British compatriots 
are commonly represented by their antagonists, and especially by 
such caricaturists as Butler, Sir Walter Scott, and the adherents of 
the dominant political and religious party in England,) a body of 
ignorant and fanatical bigots, were among the best educated, the 
most sober-minded, pure and pious men of that or of any age. It 
is true, they had their errors and their faults of character, but it 
does not become the successors of the licentious cavaliers, the ad¬ 
mirers and canonizers of Charles I. and archbishop Laud, the ad¬ 
vocates of the royal prerogative and of the star-chamber, too strictly 
to scrutinize or too severely condemn the subjects of those persecu¬ 
tions which are said to “drive even wise men mad.” 

Brewster, Carver, Bradford, and even the chivalrous Miles 
Standish, the first leaders of the Plymouth colony in church and 
state, were no common men, and were educated as well as any 
who at that time filled similar stations in European society. Win- 
throp, Davenport, Hooke, Eaton and other prominent magistrates 
and ministers of the Massachusetts colony, were some of them reg¬ 
ularly educated in the Universities of England, and had a pro- 


found knowledge of law and theology, whilst the younger Win* 
throp of Connecticut and Roger Williams of Rhode Island, were 
men of original genius, whose attainments and achievements in 
literature and religion would have done honor to any age or nation. 
In 1536, only sixteen years after they had first placed their foot 
upon the Rock of Plymouth, the Pilgrims laid the foundation of a 
University, Harvard—now the best endowed institution in the new 
world, which, under more favorable auspices, would place itself at 
the head of our literature. 

Such were a few of the men, and such the literary charac¬ 
ter and spirit of those who laid the foundations of our American 
institutions. Nor have their descendants degenerated, as we shall 
endeavor to show by a glance at their achievements in the various 
departments of literature and science to which they have directed 
their attention. 

It was a natural consequence of the religious spirit of the first 
emigrants to New England that Theology should occupy a very 
prominent position in their literature. And such was the fact.— 
Not only have their writers in this direction been numerous, but 
they have been distinguished by originality, genius, learning and 
ability. 

Though the first writers upon theology in New England pro¬ 
duced no great works that will hand down their names to future 
ages, or that mark an epoch in the science, though their style is 
quaint and disfigured with that rudeness which characterizes so 
much of the literature of the times, they yet deserve attention as 
having laid the foundations of that system of church-government 
which the Independents of Great Britain, who were at first shocked 
by its boldness, soon received from them, and which has not only 
shaped to a greater or less extent all the ecclesiastical establish¬ 
ments of this country, but has likewise extended itself to our po¬ 
litical institutions and become the model upon which both our na¬ 
tional and state governments are organized. The right and the 


17 


duty of the people to participate in the management of the church, 
exemplified and demonstrated by New England, penetrated and 
moved all other parts of the country and had almost shaken off 
the iron grasp of Rome from the necks of her laity, before her Ar¬ 
gus-eyed clergy were aware of the movement. # But it was not 
only in this direction that New England theology was active. Ev¬ 
ery article of Christian doctrine underwent a searching review in 
the pulpit and through the press. Firmly convinced that their 
own was the only form of faith and practice consistent with the 
word of God, and having taken up their abode in these “ends of 
the earth” for the purpose of securing the blessings of this faith to 
themselves and their posterity, they could not tolerate any conflict¬ 
ing views, nor even allow those who entertained them to inherit a 
part of that soil which they had reclaimed from the wilderness of 
„ heathenism in order to make it the vineyard of the church. Of 
this mode of thought the Mathers, father and son, are faithful ex¬ 
positors. Their writings are voluminous, and form a body of con¬ 
troversial and practical divinity that is an honor to the age, far tran¬ 
scending in learning and thought any thing that could be anticipa¬ 
ted in the circumstances of the authors and of the country whence 
its primeval forests and its savage aborigenes had not yet disap¬ 
peared. 

But the principle of free thought and free discussion had been 
introduced into New England by these very men who denounced 
in others what they claimed and practised for themselves. It was 
impossible, therefore, that either their theories or their institutions 
should remain unquestioned. The Anabaptists, the Quakers, and 
various other fanatics sought a refuge in America, and not satisfied 
with toleration for their opinions, claimed the right of propagating 
them. Horror-struck at the thought of having their land defiled 
by what they regarded as worse than heathen abominations, the 

* The difficulties of the bishops of Pittsburg, New York and New Orleans, 
with their Trustees, are proofs of this. 

C 


18 


pilgrims considered no measures too severe to check their progress 
and expel them from their territory. Yet one voice was raised 
in their behalf and one colony was open to their reception. With 
a clearsightedness that places him in the very foremost rank of 
philosophers, and an expansive benevolence that is of itself suffi¬ 
cient to redeem the age and Puritanism, in the very bosom of 
which he was nurtured, from the charge of narrow-minded and 
sectarian bitterness, which has been so indiscriminately fulminated 
against it, Roger Williams first maintained the rights of other men’s 
conscience and insisted upon the absolute freedom of thought and 
of speech. 

This element continually became more energetic in American 
theology as well as in American legislation, and was destined to 
work out as mighty a revolution in the church as it did in the 
state. Though at first opposed, with scarcely an exception, by the 
divines of New England, it still bore fruit, and undoubtedly added 
to the intensity and vigor of the discussions which soon passed 
from the pulpit and church to the press and to the whole nation. 
Under it have grown up several schools in theology as different in 
their character and results as the principles which they held in 
common, the oneness of truth and its universal obligation, and the 
absolute freedom of thought, of speech and of conscience. 

Jonathan Edwards is the perfection and type of the first age 
of New England theology, and his “Inquiry into the freedom of 
the Will,” appears to have exhausted the subject upon his side 
of the question, so that from his day to the present, those who 
would introduce no new element into the Calvinistic theory have 
contented themselves with explaining and defending his system. 
And whilst the acuteness of men trained in his school of logic, 
and equally at home in all the mysteries of Metaphysics, has been 
able to detect more than one flaw in his reasoning, and to show 
how frequently he has “begged the question,” there are few who 
have equalled him in acuteness of distinctions, patient grappling 


19 


with his subject, and completeness and consistency in the devel- 
opement and application of a great system to its proper purposes. 

But there were objections, well-grounded, strong moral objec¬ 
tions to the system of Edwards, and the common-sense and prac¬ 
tical character of New England sought an answer to them, and a 
remedy for the resulting evils. And this was the origin of the 
Unitarian school of New England theology. It is a trite remark 
that “extremes beget each other,” and certainly the case before us 
fully justifies it. But however much we may lament the errors 
which they inculcated, we cannot but admire the varied accom¬ 
plishments, the learning and intellectual polish, but above all the 
honesty and candor of those who will consider it no disparagement 
when we indicate Channing as having given their system a finish, 
and defended and popularized it in such a way as that, though 
one of its latest champions, he may be pointed out as its fairest 
and fullest representative. 

But orthodoxy, the reception of the peculiar and literal doc¬ 
trines of the Bible, was deeply imbedded in the heart of New Eng¬ 
land, and no mistakes of theologians upon the one side or upon 
the other could upheave it from its firm foundations. Still, there 
was a necessity that it should justify itself to reason, and especially 
to such a reasoning and inquiring race as our New England breth¬ 
ren. And this, as well as the mutual pressure of the two extremes 
which we have mentioned, gave origin to a third school of theol- 
ogy, which has been emphatically styled “ The New England 
Theology.” Although by no means confined to that region, hav¬ 
ing advocates of its peculiarities in nearly every section of the Uni¬ 
ted States, yet when we consider the cluster of great names which 
it has there marshalled or trained for its defence —Stuart, and 
Beecher and Taylor —it may with some reason claim this as its 
proper field. It would be interesting to the theologian to trace this 
school, as we think we might do, from the Edwardes through its 
supposed antagonist, Dr. Emmons, down to Prof. Tappan, who 


20 


needs but one more step to put him in the ranks of those to whom 
his associates still consider themselves antagonistic—but this would 
take us too far from the mere literature of theology, which is all 
that we propose here to sketch. 

The mention of Prof. Tappan, however, whose “Review of 
Edwards,” “Moral Agency,” “Logic,” and other metaphysical 
productions, place him in the very first class of thinkers and wri¬ 
ters, reminds us that yet a fourth school has developed itself in our 
theology—I mean the transcendental. Marsh and Tappan on the 
one side, and on the other Emerson, Parker and Bronson, (if we 
may mention one who, after being a standard-bearer in this gather¬ 
ing host, has thrown himself into the ranks of their apparent anti¬ 
podes,) yet all these, however remote from each other in many re¬ 
spects, show certain affinities which justify us in speaking of such 
a thing as an American transcendental theology, which, it would 
be easy to show, is specifically distinct from either the German or 
English transcendental philosophy. I will not deny that it is their 
practical, utilitarian, that is, as some would say, American charac¬ 
ter that thus distinguishes them, but it is enough for my purpose 
that they have a character of their own. 

In ail these schools, besides their great champions already indi¬ 
cated, we might mention a host of able and eloquent writers. But 
who will doubt that a country which has produced its Mathers 
and its Edwardes, its Dwight and its Channing, Stanhope 
Smith, and Witherspoon, and Wilson and Mason among the 
dead, and the Beechers and Barnes, the veterans Stuart and 
Alexander, to say nothing of Hodge and Bush and others who 
have established a well-deserved reputation—who will doubt that 
such a country has a theological literature of its own ? 

I have spoken of theology purely in its scientific aspect, and as 
developing itself in accordance with the genius of our nation and 
of our institutions. True, we have numerous other writers in 
nearly every department of dogmatic and of practical theology. 


i 


21 


Almost every sect and every section of Protestantism and of Ro¬ 
manism, of infidelity and of superstition, here has its representa¬ 
tives and its apologists. But as most of these present no peculiar¬ 
ities and have added nothing of their own to the literature, or tra¬ 
ditions or follies of their predecessors, we have nothing to do with 
them except to give them credit as faithful representatives of the 
system which they have adopted. As to the obscure sects, whether 
baptized Christian or unbaptized infidel, which, like the frogs of 
Egypt, have come up over our whole land, and which some would 
make the necessary consequence, and the characteristic of Ameri¬ 
can society, but which have been flung upon us from every part of 
Europe, as well as by the rank luxuriance of our own soil, these too 
have their literature, their published creeds, their new translations 
and their “golden bibies.” But such a literature, a farrago of fa¬ 
naticism, of ignorance and of blasphemy, destitute of sense and of 
reason, and not the exponent of any clear consciousness or distinct 
thought, does not, and cannot, until it works itself clear, come 
within our circle of literature, the speaking reason and the written 
thought, by which man holds communion with man, and we may 
therefore pass by it with a sigh for so much ink wasted and so 
much breath blown into the air. But to return. 

Closely connected with our theology is our eloquence. I speak 
not of eloquence in Cicero’s sense of the word, “Is orator erit , 
mea sententia hac tam gravi dignus nomine qui , quaecunque res 
incident quae sit dictione explicanda , prudenter , et composite , et 
memoriter dicat , cum quadam etiam actionis dignitatem This 
would make the orator the master of every science and the exposi¬ 
tor of every art. But by eloquence I mean that form of public ad¬ 
dress which sways the minds and feelings of men and impels to 
that course of conduct which the orator inculcates.f In this the 

* «I suppose him to be an orator, worthy of so lofty a name, who can speak 
with sense, systematically and from memory, and likewise with a graceful delivery 
upon every subject that is to be elucidated by discourse —Cicero de Orat. 15. 

f “When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when 


American pulpit has been pre-eminently successful. The pulpit 
has from the beginning been the citadel of Protestant theology, 
and the pilgrim pastors were worthy successors of Martin Luther 
and of John Knox, whose public addresses struck terror into their 
opponents, and cheered the hearts and nerved the arms of their 
friends. Thus his cotemporaries say of Davenport, who died at 
the close of the first half century after the landing at Plymouth, 
that “He was a princely preacher, very fervent and vehement in 
the manner of his delivery, a person beyond exception and com¬ 
pare for all ministerial abilities. Even in his latest years he was 
of that vivacity, that the strength of his memory, profoundness of 
his judgment, floridness of his elocution, were little, if at all, aba¬ 
ted in him. 55 # 

But the Revolution gave a new direction and a new tone to 
eloquence. The popular movements which preceded that event, 
the Provincial Assemblies where it lay in embryo, and the Conti¬ 
nental Congress whence it sprang, armed and immortal like Mi¬ 
nerva from the brain of Juno, gave it a fair field and carried it to 
perfection. Never was there a more glorious arena for eloquence 
than in the Revolutionary Congress, nor were the proceedings of 
any deliberative body ever characterized by greater ability. Lord 
Chatham, the most illustrious of British Parliamentary orators, 
who also owes no small share of his renown to the same causes 
that enkindled American eloquence, has given his testimony to 

great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in 
speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. 
Clearness, force'and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True 
eloquence indeed does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. La¬ 
bor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil for it in vain. * * * The clear 
conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, 
the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing ev¬ 
ery feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to its object—this, 
this is eloquence, or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it 
is action, noble, sublime, god-like action/’—Webster’s Discourse in commemora¬ 
tion of Adams and Jefferson. 


* Bacon’s Hist. Discourses, p. MS. 



23 


this in the most emphatic manner. Comparing the colonies with 
the free states of antiquity, the very home of the most elevated el¬ 
oquence, he declared that whilst he had studied and admired the 
productions of the Greek and Roman orators, yet “ for solidity of 
reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, no body of 
men could stand in comparison with this Congress.” Webster, 
from whom I quote this decision of the lofty Chatham, has im¬ 
mortalized this eloquence of the Congress of 1TT6, and if we had 
nothing more than his magnificent sketch of that period, it would 
forever place the question of American eloquence at rest. And al¬ 
though he has only tradition to guide him, we feel as we read his 
bold delineation of the eloquence of John Adams, that he has 
caught the inspiration if he has not revived the very words of him 
who being “dead yet speaketh.” “ Sir, I know the uncertainty 
of human affairs, but I see clearly through this day’s business. 
You and I indeed may rue it. We may not live to the time when 
this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; 
die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be 
it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven to demand the 
poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed 
hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, 
let me have a country/, or at least the hope of a country, and that 
a free country. # * # All that I have, all that I am, and all that 
I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I 
leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the 
declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God 
it shall be my dying sentiment; independence now , and indepen¬ 
dence forever.” 

Another of our great orators, # who was cut off when his sun 
was in its zenith, graphically describes the eloquence of him whom 
the poetf of the vanquished enemy celebrates as, 

* Wirt. 

f Byron. 


24 


“ Henry, that forest-born Demosthenes, 

Whose thunders shook the Philip of the seas.” 

Henry may be taken for the type of southern, as Adams of north¬ 
ern eloquence. The latter is clear, cogent, irresistible, with proof 
piled upon proof until its adversary is overwhelmed. The latter 
impetuous, boiling, fiery, sweeping every thing before it and con¬ 
suming all opposition. Introducing the first resolutions that actu¬ 
ally resisted the tyranny of the British Parliament, into the Virginia 
house of Delegates, he excited and directed the whirlwind of hu¬ 
man passion. One of his sentences has now become a page in 
the world’s history: “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his 
Cromwell, and,” whilst the cry of “treason! treason!!” re-echoed 
through the house, he boldly deduced the proper inference—“and 
George III. may profit by their example.” 

American eloquence has not expired with the sages and heroes 
of the Revolution. It still nerves the arm and lights up the eye, 
lives upon the lips and bums upon the page of the second Adams’ 
to whom we listen with all the reverence which we feel for the 
past, and all the interest inspired by the present. Hamilton, Quin¬ 
cy, Randolph, Pinckney, Wirt, Hayne, Grimke, and Harrison, 
among civilians, and Griffin, Mason, Larned and Channing, among 
divines, have left us abundant proofs of their oratorical powers.— 
Clay, Calhoun, and McDuffie; Everett, Verplanck, and Choate; 
Beecher, Way land, and perhaps a few other pulpit orators, have 
established a fame commensurate with the whole country, and to 
be transmitted to posterity. But of all orators, ancient or modern, 
to whom I have listened or whose productions I have read, I am 
free to confess that none has ever so deeply impressed my mind as 
Webster. I have listened to him in the Senate, I have heard 
his “speeches” mumbled over by the school-boy and declaimed by 

the nascent College orator, I have mused over them in the study_ 

and I have always felt them to produce an impression excited by 
no other oratory. What a glorious passage is that which never 


*25 


palls by repetition : “I shall enter on no encomium upon Massa¬ 
chusetts ; she needs none. There she is—behold her and judge 
for yourselves. There is her history—the world knows it by heart. 
The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and 
Lexington, and Bunker’s Hill; and there they will remain forever. 
The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for American in¬ 
dependence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state from New 
England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever.” # 

M. de Tocqueville —to whose chapter upon “The inflated 
style of American writers and authors” f no reply need be made, 
inasmuch as, like several other parts of his very readable book, it 
contains nothing but a theory supported only by isolated facts— 
seems to sum up his judgment of American poetry in these words: 
“Among democratic nations the sources of poetry are grand, but 
not abundant. They are soon exhausted, and poets, not finding 
the elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon them 
entirely and create monsters.”J To such generalities we reply, as 
in the former case, by an adduction of facts. 

The discovery of America, separated from the old world by 
three thousand miles of waves, its immense extent, its solemn for¬ 
ests, its savage aborigines, and the boundless field which it opened 
to enterprise and speculation, all was calculated to work upon the 
imagination and become a fit theme for the poet. The very first 
explorer of the Virginian colony felt his soul stirred up by the won¬ 
ders of the new world into which he was introduced. Smith re¬ 
cords his own wanderings and his adventures in rude rhymes, that 
are not, however, unworthy of him who was much more accus¬ 
tomed to wield the sword and the matchlock than the pen. The 
celebrated Berkeley also thought this continent the loftiest theme 

* The classical scholar will naturally think of that celebrated adjuration of 
Demosthenes, u Ov /ux rovg sv MagaB-au 7r^oy.iv^vvevc-xvTxg tuv 7rgo- 
yov *yv.” &.C. 

f Democracy in America, II., p. 82. X lb* P- 83, 4th Ed., 1841. 

D 


26 


for poetry as well as a most favorable retreat for all the Muses, as 
he proposed erecting here a University worthy of the name. Never 
was the idea of the ancients, that the bard was also a prophet, bet¬ 
ter illustrated than by his remarkable lines: 

There shall be sung another golden age, 

The rise of empires and of arts; 

The good and great inspiring epic rage, 

The wisest heads and noblest hearts. 

Westward the course of empire takes its way, 

The four first acts already past, 

A fifth shall close the drama with the day,— 

Time’s noblest offspring is the last. 

It would occupy more time than we have at our disposal to 
trace the rise of American poetry from the rude ballad celebrating 
our border wars, up to the chaste and finished productions of our 
own day. It would take us too long even to commemorate with 
a proper appreciation of their merits those whose works prove them 
not unworthy the name of poet. Some have thought it a suffi¬ 
cient refutation of all American claims to the “poet’s sacred name” 
to remind us that we do not possess any great national poem. But 
Greece had only one Homer, Rome but one Virgil, England one 
Milton. Undoubtedly when the true genius is inspired to the 
work we shall have our great national poet too. The themes are 
abundant and glorious. The discovery of America and its con¬ 
quest and colonization is a loftier theme than the voyage of Aeneas 
to Italy and the founding of Alba, 

- genus unde Latinum 

Jllbanique patres atque altae moenia Romcie. 

The war of the Revolution and the emancipation of “The Old 
Thirteen,” is more full of incident and of interest than the wrath 
of Achilles and the sack of Troy. That the character and fate of 
our aboriginal tribes is the fittest material for poetry, has been 
abundantly proved by the works of fancy to which they have 
already given birth, some of which require only a metrical dress 


to place them in the highest rank among compositions of this 
class. 

Our writers evidently have all the elements of poetry within 
them—genius and imagination and the command of language cal¬ 
culated to excite all the emotions of the beautiful and the sublime, 
thoughts true to nature and words that speak forth all that the eye 
sees and the ear hears. I believe, therefore, as I have said, that 
some great national poet will yet arise among us, yea, for all that 
I know, he may be already here. And he will be a true American 
poet, true to our national spirit and tendencies. I have no doubt 
of this, because I find our poets truer to our national instincts than 
any other class of our writers, not pandering to the vulgar passions 
of the hour, but boldly speaking out the free and lofty feelings of 
their hearts. Hear Bryant in the midst of his sublime “Hymn to 
Death,” giving utterance to our inborn hatred of tyranny: 

“Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliverer! 

God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed 
And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief. 

The conqueror of nations, walks the world, 

And it is changed beneath his feet, and all 
Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm— 

Thou, while his head is loftiest, and his heart 
Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand 
Almighty, settest upon him thy stern grasp, 

And the strong links of that tremendous chain, 

That bound mankind, are crumbled : thou dost break 
Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to dust.” 

Wilcox, and Sprague, Drake and Halleck, Longfellow and Whit¬ 
tier, Pierpont and Sigourney, have all kindled with this theme, 
and indeed I do not know that I might not add the whole band 
of American bards as having caught this spirit and swelled with it 
the loftiest notes of their lyres. But I do not know that any one 
has more fully brought out or more happily expressed our national 
spirit than Garrison, in his sonnet entitled “ The free mind” 
for which we may almost pardon his wildest speculative vaga¬ 
ries : 


28 


“High walls and huge the body may confine, 

And iron gates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze, 

And massive bolts may baffle his design, 

And vigilant keepers watch his devious way: 

Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control. 

No chains can bind it and no cell enclose; 

Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole. 

And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes! 

It leaps from mount to mount, from vale to vale 
It wanders plucking honeyed fruits and flowers; 

It visits home to hear the fireside tale. 

Or in sweet converse pass the fireside hours. 

’Tis up before the sun roaming afar, 

And in its watches wearies every star. 

In the same manner I might go through nearly every depart¬ 
ment of Literature and show, not only that it has its representative 
in America, but also that it is truly American. But this is not 
now neeeded. Washington Irving and Cooper have a fame 
that has reached every part of the civilized world. Prescott and 
Bancroft are everywhere spoken of as standing at the head of 
the “American school of History.” The veteran Stuart , the less 
showy but equally solid Gibbs , the judicious Robinson , the meteor¬ 
like Bush , with a host of ardent disciples or fellow-laborers, have 
made a commencement that bids fair to rival Germany itself, 
whence it has so liberally drawn its materials. Felton and An- 
thon, Lewis and Woolsey, have made a fair beginning in classi¬ 
cal literature, and able men in the professorial chairs of many of 
our colleges will, no doubt, disseminate a general taste among 
our “studious youth” for these pursuits. Astronomy has had its 
Rittenhouse and its Bowditch, Chemistry its Franklin and its Hare, 
Zoology its Wilson, its Godman, its Audubon and its Harris. In 
short, I think that the day is not far distant when it will be said of 
American literature, “Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit .” 

But here I fear that I shall be considered a faithful representa¬ 
tive of my country, at least in my boasting. Yet I am not uncon¬ 
scious of our imperfections. They are grave and numerous. Our 
very ambition, our pretence, and our self-laudation, are among the 


29 


worst, and one of the greatest obstacles in the way of our improve¬ 
ment. The active and energetic minds of our scholars have at¬ 
tempted to master every thing, and hence have necessarily become 
superficial.—They wish to reap so soon as they have sown, and 
thus the richest fields are productive only of unripe fruits. We are 
enamored of the blessings of education and the land is covered with 
miserably taught schools. We prize and take pride in the name of 
scholar, and our colleges send forth every year their classes of grad¬ 
uates who ought to have remained at their books at least until they 
had mastered the mysteries of grammar. Books are the imple¬ 
ments and the offspring of the learned—and the press groans with 
all sorts of publications that it is blessedness never to have read. 

These are evils which it is difficult not to see and easy enough 
to ridicule. But I believe that they are evils that will cure them¬ 
selves. We are a people too sharp-sighted, too wide awake to our 
own interests not to see the loss and disgrace which we thus sutler. 
Pretension without performance will not be*tolerated in learning 
any more than in any other department of life. Every thing will 
just as certainly find its level, its proper place and relations to 
the rest of the world, as upon the great ocean, where nothing less 
than a continent or a real island that sends its roots down into the 
very centre of the earth, can long resist the power of the unchained 
waters. True scholarship and true authorship, I mean to say, are 
the only thing that can here finally stand before the free and con¬ 
stantly searching ordeal of an enquiring public of so many millions 
of readers as we shall ere long have, when, as must eventually be 
the case, our whole nation is educated, and a cheap press, multi¬ 
plying its creations ad infinitum to meet the universal demand, 
shall scatter its sheets, like the seed of our husbandmen, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific. But “the workman is worthy of his hire.” 
And give the intellectual laborer his wages, give him the influence, 
the fame, the admiration or the bread for which he toils, and you 
will just as certainly have his services and his additions to intellec- 


« 


30 

tual, the brightest part of national wealth, as you have the wheat 
of the farmer, or the ore of the miner, or the cloth of the manufac¬ 
turer, when you give him fair wages for the sweat of his brow. 

And let me add, in conclusion, that it is evidently just as im¬ 
portant, nay it is more important, that we have a national literature 
than that we have a material national industry. I think I have 
shown that we have the germs, yea some of the fairest flowers of 
a national literature. And I started out with the proposition that 
this literature is the natural and necessary result of a national 
thought of a national soul. Now check the outgoings of this soul, 
prevent the developement, destroy the productions of such a liter¬ 
ature, and you have a dumb nation, yea a nation without a soul 
or life of its own. Such a state of things may be impossible, and 
whatever may be the fate of others, it is certain that we are to have 
a literature, a strongly marked, national literature of our own. The 
impulse here given to every kind of literature, and the thirty or 
forty thousand volumes already produced leave no doubt as to this 
fact. 

But literature is not necessarily good or productive of good. It 
is both a cause and an effect. It springs from the national charac¬ 
ter and exerts a reflex influence upon that character. A vitiated 
people call forth a body of vicious authors, and one corrupt author 
may spread moral ruin over a whole province or a whole nation. 
The French Encyclopaedists and followers of Yoltaire were the 
natural offspring of the superstition of Romanism, and of the li¬ 
centious reign of Louis XIY., but they did not perpetuate the 
state of society out of which they grew. They converted the des¬ 
potism of the one into the despotism of the many, the corruption 
of the court into the corruption of the crowd. Had Paine’s “Age 
of Reason” found as loud an echo in the beatings of the national 
heart as his political tracts, it would have been equally effective in 
its mission. As it was, it brought forth a rank harvest of infidelity 
and moral pollution among those who were prepared for it. 


31 


# 


A pure and sound national literature is, therefore, evidently one 
of our first and highest wants. If we wish our national spirit, our 
love of religion, of liberty, of justice and of order, to be preserved 
and extended—preserved to all ages and extended wherever the 
foot of the descendants of the Puritans or of the inheritors of their 
principles, rests—we must have a literature that will breathe this 
spirit, that will defend the institutions to which it has given birth, 
and that will beautify them with all the embellishments of fancy, 
and support them with all the resourcesof learning. 

This involves the idea that we are carefully to foster and de- 
velope our proper national literature. Let our native writers boldly 
utter their own sentiments, supporting them by all the appliances 
of learning, and polishing their productions with all the care which 
the nature of the case requires. The precept which Horace gives 
his cotemporaries is still more necessary for us Americans, who are 
disposed to do everything with railroad speed: 

u Saepe stilum vertas , iterum quae digna legi sint 

Scripturus ;— 

And this is one of the considerations that commend to us the dili¬ 
gent study of the Greek and Latin classics, that they not only hold 
up to us the best models of style, but likewise require an amount 
of steady application in order to accomplish anything of import¬ 
ance, that cannot but have the most salutary effect in correcting 
the tendency to hasty and careless composition. Let our writers 
thus possess genius, learning and taste, and they will find readers. 
And when they command readers, they will command publishers. 
I know that many complain of the want of an international copy¬ 
right law as unfavorable to American literature, because publishers 
will rather print works of merit written by foreigners to whom they 
pay nothing, than native works which they are obliged to purchase. 
But whilst I am the advocate of an international copy-right, it is 
not upon this ground, but upon that of sheer justice to the author, 
who lias as good a right to the profits accruing from the products 


V 


32 

of his brain on one side as on the other side of the Atlantic. The 
works of English writers are republished and sell here because 
they are works of genius and taste, or at least suit the taste and 
genius of those who read them. Let then our American authors 
produce works of equal merit and they will sell still better, be¬ 
cause more deeply imbued with our national spirit. And surely the 
productions of our press are multiplying rapidly enough. To say 
nothing of periodicals and newspapers, of which the “name is le¬ 
gion,” hundreds of new publications are making their appearance 
every year. Let but their quality correspond to their quantity and 
we shall have all that we can desire in a national literature. And 
why it should not be so, we can imagine no possible reason. From 
what the genius of our writers has already achieved in every de¬ 
partment of literature, in the more elegant and in the more ab¬ 
struse, in the purely useful, to which our circumstances give us so 
strong an impulse, and in those usually considered as simply orna¬ 
mental, and from the increasing number of our poets, our orators, 
our philosophers and our divines, we infer that American Liter¬ 
ature has before it a career as long and as glorious as its com¬ 
mencement has been brilliant and vigorous. 








LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 










